Evaluating Websites

The articles on evaluating websites gave a lot of insight on evaluating web sites, and what criteria to use when doing evaluations. From the various sites, it is clear that authorship, currency of the site, objectivity, meeting the intended purpose, supporting their purpose, and using external references are important things to consider when evaluating sites.

This first site that picked to evaluate this week is the Nazareth Area High School web site, hs.nazarethasd.org. I found a lot of problems with this site. First off, the site is not made for monitors using 800X600 resolutions and therefore a visitor, even when using a much higher resolution, must scroll horizontally and vertically view this site. Secondly, there is very little important information that is given on the page without having to scroll; plus a visitor has to page-down 6 times to get to the bottom of the site. The main page also way too many links, and too much unneeded information – it’s just much too cluttered. There is some contrast, but it’s not used effectively; in fact, it’s really difficult to see the contrast since you need to page-down several times to view the page. There’s also no uniformity to the frame used on the left side of the page; some links try to keep the frame to navigate the site, but others are completely different. I also found couple of links that don’t work.

The good things are: that it shows who the authors are (but it doesn’t tell how to contact them); it is pretty current (shows the end of school is here and it makes-note of the 4th of July); and it’s geared towards parents and students.

The other site that I reviewed was the Lower Nazareth Elementary website, lne.nazarethasd.org. This is a much better site than the High School site, but it still has some major issues. It too is not geared towards the 800X600 resolution and therefore one still needs to scroll to get to the pertinent information. One major problem that I found was that when viewing the main page in Firefox, the menus didn’t work. I found the navigation bars a nice feature, but it should really how which submenu you are on when using the menu. Also, many of the links don’t show where the hyperlinks go.

The good things that I found with this site were that it was easy to find who does the site, and how to contact the person. I also liked the use of chalkboard, the graphics, some of the flash animation. It is also up-to-date, and it is definitely geared towards elementary students and their parents.

As far as applying this information to my site, I think that I plan on learning from their mistakes -- especially when it comes to the High School website. I plan on going with a simpler design with not much clutter; and I’ll try to use better contrasts. From the Lower Nazareth Elementary site, I learned that I like the navigation menu and I might use something similar on my site – however, I’ll ensure that it works in IE, firefox, opera, and safari.